I gasped a second later, arching against him as his hand found my breast. His fingers cupped it through my soft cup bra with powerful warmth, not greedy but open and generous. One thumb stroked back and forth across my nipple, and the sensitive nub swelled under the smooth fabric, its tightening whorls eager for more intimate contact, for our skins to touch …
‘Sasha,’ he sighed against my mouth.
His mouth found mine, and this time the kiss was deep and drugging. He caught me up in his arms and we staggered back onto the silk-covered bed, landing awkwardly. I could feel his body hard against mine, and welcomed it, my legs parting instinctively. His knee nudged at my thighs, helping me.
My hands were trapped between our two torsos, but I dragged them down his bare muscular chest. His abs were hard and ridged under my hungry fingertips, and I heard him gasp too, just as I had done, reacting to the touch of skin on skin.
‘Sasha?’ The sound of Missie’s voice outside in the corridor made me stiffen in shock, suddenly realising what we were doing. Not only what, but where and when. ‘Sasha, where are you?’
I had vanished from my dressing room right before a concert. Missie was searching for me, and growing increasingly frantic, by the high note in her voice.
She was knocking on the doors along the corridor, and presumably checking those that were open.
‘Sasha? My love? It’s getting late …’
I wanted to stop but I couldn’t. His kiss consumed me. I was burning up, alive to nothing but the thump of his heart against mine.
Suddenly, she came to his bedroom. The door handle turned, but it was locked. She rattled the handle, then knocked urgently.
‘Sasha? Are you in there?’
We broke apart, gasping like divers surfacing for air, both of us staring at the other, hungry and obsessed.
‘Sasha, please.’ Missie had a sixth sense about me, and she had obviously decided this was where I was hiding. Either that or we had made more noise that I realised. She came close to the door, her voice loud even through the wood. ‘They need you out front soon. For final rehearsals. We have to do make-up and hair. Yes?’
I could not continue ignoring her. It was unfair.
‘Sorry, Missie, can you give me five minutes?’ My voice was like a stranger’s, thin and breathless. ‘Please.’
There was a short silence.
‘Five minutes,’ she repeated, in a strict tone.
Then her heels clacked away down the corridor, back towards the dressing room.
Oh my God, I thought, freezing against him in embarrassment. If he hadn’t locked his bedroom door, we might have been caught necking like a couple of horny teenagers.
Jean-Luc sensed my instinctive recoil, and pulled away too, his eyes glittering, his breathing rapid. ‘Forgive me,’ he said unevenly, then began to add, ‘I shouldn’t have – ’
‘No,’ I said at exactly the same time, shaking my head and swinging my legs round as I tried to stand. ‘It was my fault. I was half asleep.’
‘Otherwise you would never have kissed me?’ The question was dry, but I could tell he was serious. ‘Hey, careful.’ He caught me as I swayed, still unsteady. ‘You okay?’
Our eyes met, and I was lost.
I met his kiss with unexpected ferocity, almost torn apart by it. His tongue slipped into my mouth, playing against mine, teasing me, while my hands gripped the short hairs at the back of his head. He lifted me, and my legs came around his back, anchoring my body against his. Then he laid back on the black silk of his bed and we kissed there in a deep, intent silence until we had nearly reached the point of no return. Then we stopped by mutual consent and pulled apart, both lost in passion and panting for breath. His chest was heaving like mine. The scar on his temple showed livid against his skin, his dark brows crooked beneath them, asking a question I didn’t want to answer …
‘Qu’est-ce que tu veux, ma belle?’ he whispered, holding my gaze.
I swallowed hard.
What do you want, gorgeous?
Then I closed my eyes. Our lips met again, kissing urgently, our bodies pressing hard against each other. My head spun as I clung to him, on fire with what felt very much like lust. I couldn’t remember ever wanting a man this badly before. This must be what madness feels like, I thought, unable to fight the tide of pure visceral need surging inside my body, and gave up, allowing it to rage and churn through me. And it was obvious he felt the same, his hands moulding me against his lower body in a way that left me in no illusions about his own need.
Three or four minutes passed, our kisses increasingly desperate. Then Jean-Luc groaned and buried his face in my throat. ‘We can’t.’
‘I know.’
‘This has to stop.’
‘Yes,’ I said hoarsely, then gripped him again when he tried to pull away. ‘But not yet, not yet.’
‘She’ll be coming back. Any second now.’ With a shaky laugh, Jean-Luc put me aside, his hands gentle. ‘But that doesn’t mean we can’t be together.’ He kissed me on the mouth, adding softly, ‘Only later, okay? After the concert has finished.’
His words shocked me into stillness.
After the concert.
I was shocked not because I had forgotten about the concert, but because this was a clear invitation to spend the night with him rather than heading back to the Meurice.
I wanted him, yes. But enough to stay the night?
Someone would be bound to find out I hadn’t left with the other guests, and then our names would be linked in the press, and I wasn’t sure I was ready for all that. The paparazzi, the long lenses, the sensational scoops in the gossip columns …
He was a rich man, and well-known in France. But he was not a celebrity in the same way that I was. Somehow, I suspected he had no idea of what an affair between us might entail.
I looked at him with clearer eyes, suddenly aware of the wider implications of what we were doing. That was when it hit me. I felt foolish. Irresponsible, even. What on earth was wrong with me? Surely those photos on the wall of his room should have been enough to warn me off him? Any man who could hoard photos and cuttings about me and Lisette in that strange, obsessive manner was not someone I should be going to bed with.
Yet even without the evidence of the photo wall, Jean-Luc was still the husband of the other driver in the accident that killed my sister.
It was wrong on both those counts.
I couldn’t do it.
Not to Lisette.
And certainly not to myself.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said faintly, over the roaring in my ears. ‘I don’t think so. I can’t stay after the concert.’
‘What?’
He stared at me blankly.
‘You heard me. I’m not staying the night with you. Not tonight. Not any night.’ I got up and walked to the door, tidying my dishevelled hair and clothes. ‘Look, it’s quite simple. You were in the car that night, Jean-Luc. You were there when Lisette died. For God’s sake, you held her hand.’ I turned to meet his gaze, and felt almost accused by the stunned look on his face. ‘Think about it for a minute. How would it look to people if they knew? To the public? To the paparazzi?’
‘Who gives a damn how it looks?’
‘I do,’ I said, though everything inside me was aching. ‘Lisette was my sister, and I give a damn. This feels wrong.’
‘Sasha, please … ’
But my mind was made up. I unlocked his bedroom door, calling urgently down the empty corridor outside. ‘Missie? I’m ready for you now.’
Jean-Luc came towards me at a stride as though meaning to grab me. Maybe even lock the door and kiss me again. But I slipped out into the corridor before he could do so, my face averted, and he stopped dead.
‘I’m really sorry, Jean-Luc. What happened just now between us, it was a moment of madness. And that’s all it should ever be. A moment. Nothing more.’
He said nothing, merely staring at me.
I heard Missie coming back, high he
els clacking noisily, and had never felt more relieved in my life to hear that sound.
‘I hope you enjoy the concert tonight,’ I added at the last minute, and hurried away to join her. ‘You and your daughter.’
Missie met me halfway and hustled me back to the dressing room, muttering about not having enough time to get me ready and not being a miracle-worker.
She peered at me searchingly though once we were inside, the door safely shut on the outside world. ‘I hope you haven’t done something stupid with that man,’ she said, and rolled her eyes when I turned away, unable to say anything. ‘Oh my God, when will you learn to leave men like that alone, my little Sasha? Bad, dangerous men. On top of everything else that’s happening in your life as well. And they need you out there for rehearsals.’ She clucked her tongue again, pushing me towards the dressing table where I sat down in front of the mirror, limp and unresisting. ‘And now look at you … What a mess. Are those tears?’
‘No,’ I said thickly.
‘Liar, liar, pants on fire.’ Missie picked up a fine-toothed comb and began teasing my hair with it. ‘Men here, men there. That Jean-Luc, I’ve seen his type before. He is nothing but trouble. Whatever is the matter with you, little Sasha?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said in a small voice, and hugged myself. ‘I wish I did, Missie. But I don’t.’
To my immense relief, she did not pursue the subject, but turned her attention towards making me look presentable for the stage.
I wished it was as easy for me to push the thought of Jean-Luc aside. But he was in my head and in my heart, his lean body and intent face looming before me, the hint of some secret in that relentless gaze. But what?
Despite the turmoil raging inside me, I somehow managed to push away all that madness once I got out onto the stage, concentrating on my voice and warm-up routines instead. For once, I welcomed the boredom of sound checks, and endless cue reminders for entrances and exits, as they gave me something to focus on that was not my unhappy heart.
After rehearsals came to an end, I slipped backstage to my dressing room again, as part of my usual routine, to rest my voice and prepare myself mentally before the show started.
Missie went ahead, one of Jean-Luc’s minders walking close behind us, all of us avoiding the paparazzi who had already started to arrive and were busy snapping photos of the house in its glorious countryside setting, the huge white marquee and all the frenetic pre-concert preparations going on around us.
I stopped briefly to sign an autograph for one of the caterers, whose daughter was apparently a big fan.
‘She loves your music,’ the woman said in careful English, smiling.
‘Merci.’
Over her shoulder, as we stood chatting briefly about music, I caught a glimpse of a man behind some extra staging near the marquee. A man in a dark suit wearing a hat that was tilted down to cover his face.
He was watching me.
As soon as he realised that I’d spotted him, the man turned away, disappearing behind the staging. He was there one minute, gone the next. He removed himself so quickly, in fact, that I couldn’t be sure afterwards that I had seen him at all.
Except that he reminded me of someone.
It was only a faint memory. A tiny clanging of an alarm bell at the back of my head. But hadn’t I seen that same man in a dark suit once before, or someone very like him, also watching me backstage in Paris? It must have been just before my sister’s accident …
‘Okay, it’s late,’ Missie said, intervening with a smile for the autograph hunter. ‘Sorry, but we need to get Sasha back to the dressing room.’
The caterer thanked me again and wandered away, happy with the autograph I’d scrawled in black marker pen across a concert programme for her daughter.
‘You’re so rude,’ I told Missie absent-mindedly, still looking among the now thickening crowds for any sign of the man in the dark suit and hat.
‘That’s what I’m here for. And I’m also here to squeeze you into that skimpy bloody handkerchief of a dress you’ve chosen to wear tonight. And with your tummy showing too. Oh yes, a pretty jewel in your navel. But mark my words, you’ll catch a cold and spend the next three weeks with a red nose like a reindeer. And nobody will want you then.’ Busily, she linked her arm with mine, then stopped. She studied my face, tipping her head to one side. ‘What is it? What’s troubling you now?’
‘Nothing.’ I smiled at her, determined to conceal the feeling of dread in my heart until I could decide what it meant. ‘Absolutely nothing. Yes, let’s go squeeze me into that tiny dress.’ I patted her hand. ‘You’re too good to me, Missie.’
‘This is true,’ she said, with a heartfelt sigh.
CHAPTER TWENTY
It was odd to be singing on stage without Damian there in the wings. It had to be the first time I’d ever performed without him by my side since the day Lisette and I signed that contract for him to be our manager. A contract I had now breached by sacking him. But I felt no regret. It had been the best move possible. He was no longer fit to be my manager.
It was hard not to wonder how he was taking it though, and what he intended to do to punish me for that sudden, irrevocable decision, Because I knew he would try to strike back at me. Whether he succeeded or not would be up to me, not him. But there was no way a man like Damian McDowell would allow what he must see as my betrayal to pass unpunished. Lisette and I had always been his only big acts. Without me, he would start to haemorrhage money very quickly, and that would fear would spur him into action against me.
A law suit, definitely. But what else?
I tried to put it out of my mind. But the sense of dread kept returning to plague my mind, especially when my gaze kept searching the crowd from the wings for signs of that man in the dark suit and hat.
Maybe he was just one of Jean-Luc’s security detail.
Or maybe the man in the suit represented something more sinister, a threatening part of my subconscious, come back to haunt me now I’d returned to Paris against my better judgement.
Missie did not allow me to dwell on such things, however, escorting me briskly from dressing room to stage with barely time to look at anyone in the crowd.
‘Look straight ahead and focus on your breathing,’ she said into my ear, copying what Damian always used to say to me before a performance. ‘And stand up straight,’ she added in a cross whisper as I made my way onto the stage. ‘You look like a puppet with cut strings!’
It occurred to me that Missie would make a good manager for me. If I could only persuade her to be a little more complimentary …
The charity concert passed in a blur of light and colour, and the usual deafening roar of applause that was often all I recalled after a big performance like this.
Tonight, I remembered two things with total clarity.
One was the look on Zena’s face when I called her onto the stage partway through my set, and she came slowly with her nurse in her wheelchair, looking uncertainly out at the sea of faces, then gasped in joy when I handed her a microphone and invited her to sing with me. We sang my newest hit together, Star Love, and I smiled at the sound of her high, warbling voice hitting the notes perfectly.
Afterwards, I handed her the gift-wrapped birthday present Missie and I had selected for her at the Galeries Lafayette, a beautiful snow globe with a fairy crystal palace inside. I kissed her on the forehead as Zena sat, clutching the lavishly bow-tied gift on her lap, tears in her eyes as everyone in the audience stood to sing, ‘Happy birthday,’ to her.
The second was when I came to sing the crowd’s favourite, one of our earliest and best-known songs, the one I often ended a show on.
I opened my mouth to sing the first lines, and the worst happened. One of my nightmares came true. Not the old nightmare about being trapped in a confined space, cold water rising to my chin, while a stranger watched me without helping. But the other nightmare, the one I frequently had the night before a concert, where I would come on stage a
nd open my mouth only for no words to come out, echoing the very real fear that gripped me just before I went on stage every time …
The opening bars of the song played, familiar as my own name, but no words came with them. I knew the song, yet my mind was a blank. I looked out past the blinding stage lights to that sea of darkness in the marquee where I knew over a hundred faces must be staring back at me: silent, upturned, expectant.
The pianist played the opening notes on the piano again, perhaps thinking I had missed my cue, and I glanced round at him, helpless.
Not again, I was thinking. Not bloody again.
I fumbled with my microphone headset as though blaming it for the absence of sound, but there was cold sweat on my forehead under the hot bank of lights.
Exactly as I had always feared, I was standing mute on stage, my head empty. I had forgotten the words of our most popular song. Words I myself had written. Words I had sung countless times on stages just like this, with Lisette by my side, our twin voices joined in perfect harmony just as our lives had been joined.
Except now I was alone.
Never …
Desperately, my brain grasped for that elusive opening line as it disappeared down the rabbit-hole of my memory. But there was nothing to seize on.
Nothing except, ‘Never …’
The weight of silence in the marquee was immense. With an audience, it was never pure silence but a warm rustling ocean of breathing and whispering and laughter. And so many eyes, standing there alone was like being faced with a vast peacock tail, swaying before me in the darkness.
Phones and cameras flashed across the marquee, lights bouncing brightly off my face, my tiny white dress with its glittering jewel at my navel, capturing my dreaded silence, the moment of amnesia I had always secretly feared.
Not my fear was here, and it was real.
Panic held me tight.
My chest heaved like I’d been running, my palms suddenly sweaty. I heard my breath rasp across the marquee, amplified by my headset mic.
How long had I been frozen here, mouth open, no sound coming out?
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